Page 226 of Ex Somnis

I hope she can. I think she can.

We agreed, all of us, that none of us would ever step into 5D again. Not even for a minute. Not for anything.

And even Jasper, who has become a genuinely frightening lucid dreamer, agreed without an argument.

He’s more at peace with this than Nevan.

“She loves me,” he told me, simple as that. “She always loved me. And she’s where she feels good now. Where she’s not sick. I’m not going to be sad that my mom finally gets to feel like herself.”

Eighteen years old when he said that. Nineteen now.

That kid is going to be fine.

Nevan is still talking when I notice the smell. It drifts in from the hallway. It doesn’t belong in a hospital at all. It’s sweet and citrus. Lemon muffins.

The same way my mom’s smelled.

“I’ll be right back,” I murmur, and Nevan nods without breaking off, and I step out into the corridor, following my nose like a cartoon, because grief makes you grateful for anything that smells like the person you miss.

I want a second of it.

Three doors down, a room stands open.

Inside, a nurse is standing by the bed with a paper bag in one hand and what looks like a still-warm lemon muffin halfway to her mouth. When she sees me in the doorway, she startles, a few crumbs of the muffin falling to the floor.

“Oh, I’m so sorry—” I start, but she cuts me off.

“I’m not stealing a patient’s food, I promise.” She gestures with the muffin, and even more crumbs fall. What a waste. “His son brings these. For the staff. Every week. Says it’s the least he can do for the people who sit with his dad.” She takes a guilty little bite. “They’re really good, though. I have no self-control.”

“Don’t worry about it.” I smile. “They smell incredible. I followed my nose down the hall to ask where they are from.”

“Oh, I don’t know, I’m sorry. But I can ask him next time. Do you want one?” she offers.

“No, thank you.” I smile, feeling like an idiot. “I really don’t… I don’t know why I came to check, honestly.”

She sets the bag down on the side table beside a bunch of red roses. “He brings these too.” She sighs as her finger glides over the petals. “Some people just don’t give up on a person.”

I’m only half listening, because my eyes drift, idle, to the man in the bed, and when they do, the breath stops in my chest. He’s old, gray-haired, and at least twenty years older than the version I know.

I can’t see his eyes because they’re closed, duh. But I am fiercely glad of that, because I think if they opened right now, they would be green.

“I think,” I hear myself say, very far away. “I think I know him.”

The nurse glances over with a smile. “Oh, that’s possible! He had the flower shop in town, the little corner one, where the laundromat is now.”

It’s always plants. Trees. Pots. Whatever fell on the flower-shop guy was probably a fern.

Ridge’s voice echoes in my ears.

“Is his name Lucien?” I ask, my hands trembling on my side.

“Yeah. Lucien Laurin. Lovely man, by all accounts.”

I stand in the doorway and look at him.

The boogeyman.

The thing in the dark.